Google Merchant: Common feed errors

There may be many errors during uploading or creating your feed. You need to keep an eye on them all the time so everything will work properly. We will try to sum up some of them so you could fix them. Usually, there are four issues that cause trouble. It can be :

• Feed creation issues
• Feed registration issues
• Formatting issues
• Uploading issues

We will talk about all of them.

1. Feed creation errors

Please check out your feed file. Your feed may be missing a required attribute such as id, title, description, link or any others.Keep in mind that Google currently don’t allow feeds in .xls format. If you created a feed in this format, you need to convert it to a .txt file.

2. Feed registration errors

Target country – When you are uploading your feed, you need to choose the target country. This means Google is asking you where you will sell your products. Keep in mind that the items or data feed uploaded to a selected target country must meet the requirements of the target country you submit to + your product data and landing pages need to meet the feed specifications and policies.Data feed file name – RSS and Atom files should end with an .xml extension. Filenames that don’t end with any extension will be processed as a tab-delimited file by default and should end with (.txt). See Merchant Center help page for more info.Filename extensions like .zip or .gz – When you are using these extensions, you must ensure that the file is compressed. For example – If your .zip file contains another .zip file, it may cause feed failure.

3. Formatting errors

• Text or Tab Delimited
  • If you are using previously formatted text, make sure your feed has quoted attributes turned on.
  • Make sure that your columns (tabs) with the attributes correctly match all the products; oftentimes there will be either an extra tab or a missing tab.
  • If you’re using Google Sheets, the Google Merchant Center add-on can help you validate your data.

• XML
  • Be aware of using special characters like “&”.
  • If your attribute names contain capital letters, make sure to remove them. For example, the id attribute should be entered as <id> not <Id>.
  • Incorrect encoding sometimes occurs. Be sure to encode your file in the accepted formats.

4. Uploading errors

There may be many errors during uploading your feed. Please check our guide on how to upload feed.In your feeds you can click on the name of your feed you want to check. After that, you are redirected to the page where you can download under the “Processing” tab your feed file. You will be able to download a CSV report of your detailing processing errors and warnings.